Stagecoach (1939) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process. Director: Ernest Haycox (original story), Dudley Nichols (screen play) Stars: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

Watch the video Related News a list of 46 titles created 03 Mar 2014 a list of 26 titles created 28 May 2015 a list of 39 titles created 11 months ago a list of 26 titles created 10 months ago a list of 40 titles created 8 months ago Search for " Stagecoach " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 4 wins & 5 nominations. See more awards » Videos A Civil War veteran embarks on a journey to rescue his niece from an Indian tribe. Director: John Ford A senator, who became famous for killing a notorious outlaw, returns for the funeral of an old friend and tells the truth about his deed. Director: John Ford Dunson leads a cattle drive, the culmination of over 14 years of work, to its destination in Missouri. But his tyrannical behavior along the way causes a mutiny, led by his adopted son.

Directors: Howard Hawks, Arthur Rosson Stars: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a cripple, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy. Director: Howard Hawks At Fort Apache, an honorable and veteran war captain finds conflict when his regime is placed under the command of a young, glory hungry lieutenant colonel with no respect for the local Indian tribe. Director: John Ford A Western retelling the tale of the Shoot-out at the OK Corral. Director: John Ford Captain Nathan Brittles, on the eve of retirement, takes out a last patrol to stop an impending massive Indian attack. Encumbered by women who must be evacuated, Brittles finds his mission imperiled. Director: John Ford A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smoldering settler/rancher conflict forces him to act. Director: George Stevens A cavalry officer posted on the Rio Grande must deal with murderous raiding Apaches, his son who's a risk-taking recruit and his wife from whom he has been separated for many years.

Director: John Ford A retired American boxer returns to the village of his birth in Ireland, where he finds love. Director: John Ford A marshall, personally compelled to face a returning deadly enemy, finds that his own town refuses to help him. Director: Fred Zinnemann An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them. Director: Sam Peckinpah Edit Storyline A simple stagecoach trip is complicated by the fact that Geronimo is on the warpath in the area. The passengers on the coach include a drunken doctor, two women, a bank manager who has taken off with his client's money, and the famous Ringo Kid, among others. Written by Andrew Hyatt <dres@uiuc.edu> See All (71) » Taglines: Danger holds the reins as the devil cracks the whip ! Desperate men ! Frontier women ! Rising above their pasts in a West corrupted by violence and gun-fire !

See more » Genres: 3 March 1939 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Höllenfahrt nach Santa Fé See more » Filming Locations: Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording) Color: Did You Know? Trivia John Ford loved the Monument Valley location so much that the actual stagecoach journey traverses the valley three times. See more » Goofs In one scene the stagecoach is seen moving far away from "The Mittens", and in the very next scene it is crossing in front of "The Mittens". See more » Quotes [first lines] Cavalry scout : These hills here are full of Apaches. They've burnt every ranch building in sight. [referring to Indian scout] Cavalry scout : He had a brush with them last night. Says they're being stirred up by Geronimo. Capt. Sickel : Geronimo? How do we know he isn't lying? Cavalry scout : No, he's a Cheyenne. They hate Apaches worse than we do. (Brea, Ca. USA) – See all my reviews Stagecoach is not your normal, run of the mill, western.

It will have you on the edge of your seat as passengers make their way through some dangerous Indian country. By the time the film ends, you will know all of the characters very well and ,for the most part,care whether they live or die.John Ford's excellent directing, great performances from John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and, especially, Thomas Mitchell who won an Acadamy Award for his portrayal of a drunken doctor aboard the stage. Add a great score, super stunt work, and filming done at Monument Valley (Arizona /Utah border) and you have a complete motion picture. I highly recommend "Stagecoach". 31 of 42 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes John Wayne and Alex Cord: Two Ringo Kids of ‘Stagecoach’ - The New York Times The New York Times DVD |The Man Who Dared to Fill John Wayne’s Boots Search Continue reading the main story Photo Slim Pickens, Van Heflin and Alex Cord in a still from the 1966 remake of “Stagecoach.” Credit Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment IN 1966, the bravest man in movies must have been Alex Cord, the Long Island native who stepped into the John Wayne role in Gordon Douglas’s color and CinemaScope remake of John Ford’s 1939 “Stagecoach.” On one hand, it was a fabulous break for an unknown actor with only one major role (in Richard Quine’s “Synanon” ) to his credit. On the other, it was practically an engraved invitation to commit career suicide. For Wayne, his role as the Ringo Kid finally made him a movie star, after 10 years of false starts and setbacks. The part remained indissolubly associated with him, as the movie went on to become an American classic and, for many viewers, the one-film definition of the western genre.

The 1966 “Stagecoach,” on the other hand, received moderately approving reviews (“an enjoyable trip most of the way,” Robert Alden wrote in The New York Times) and began the slow slide into obscurity that seems to be the fate of overreaching remakes. Though it has occasionally surfaced on television, Douglas’s “Stagecoach” has remained elusive on home video until now, as it arrives in a limited edition DVD from the boutique label Twilight Time. Continue reading the main story The lanky, long-faced Mr. Cord actually bears a closer resemblance to Tom Tyler, who played the Ringo Kid’s gun-slinging nemesis, Luke Plummer, in the John Ford film, than he does to the towering, barrel-chested Wayne. Under Douglas’s direction, Mr. Cord creates a less charismatic but more approachable Ringo. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the original film, Ford introduces Wayne with a highly uncharacteristic visual flourish: the camera darts toward Wayne in a rapid dolly shot, as the actor, standing in front of what appears to be a projected background, twirls his rifle in a grand, theatrical gesture.

The shot briefly goes out of focus as Ford’s cinematographer, Bert Glennon, struggles to keep up with the change in scale — an effect that may have been accidental, but which grants Wayne an almost supernatural aura, as his face emerges from the blur to fill the screen in a dominating close-up. This is mythmaking, pure and simple. Douglas, by contrast, discovers Mr. Cord’s Ringo sitting by the side of the road, in a roomy, wide-screen composition that fully integrates the actor with natural environment. In the background, a rushing waterfall imparts some of its strength and wonder to the character, but Douglas soon moves to a higher angle that eliminates the waterfall from the image, and actually seems to diminish Ringo’s stature by looking down on him, hemmed in by a cluster of trees. There’s no Homeric apotheosis here, just a frank appraisal of a man who lives within the limits of the natural world. The comparison illuminates the difference between two films and two filmmakers working from what is essentially the same script (although the rewrite, by Joseph Landon, expands some scenes and eliminates others, large passages of Dudley Nichols’s original dialogue are recycled).

While Ford was indisputably the greater artist, Douglas has put his finger on one of the weaknesses of “Stagecoach”: Ford’s determination to make a sort of meta-western, a film that deals in archetypes rather than individuals, and epic themes rather than genre conventions. With “Stagecoach,” Ford’s return to the genre after 13 years of more “prestigious” material, the western achieves self-consciousness, an awareness of itself as America’s official foundation myth. Douglas almost literally brings the material back to earth, shifting the action from the black-and-white, lunar landscape of Monument Valley (“Stagecoach” was the first film that Ford shot among its eerie promontories) to the fecund greenery of a Colorado mountain range. Ford, in Andrew Sarris’s famous phrase, keeps his eye on the horizon line of history; Douglas, whose sensibility is at once more pessimistic and humanistic than Ford’s, concentrates on the immediate problems facing the characters in the foreground. Photo Mr. Cord with Ann-Margret, his romantic partner in the film.

Credit Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment The 1966 “Stagecoach” is an intriguing anticipation of the disaster-film cycle that would begin in earnest with “Airport” in 1970. An all-star cast (for 1966, at least — Ann-Margret, Red Buttons, Mike Connors, Bing Crosby, Robert Cummings, Van Heflin, Slim Pickens, Stefanie Powers) faces an apocalyptic threat (provided in “Stagecoach” by some uncharacterized Indians, the weakest element in both movies) while trapped within a restricted environment, much like the casts of “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno.” But what at first seems a threat becomes a sort of therapy, as some characters reveal their hidden weaknesses (Cummings’s smiling, sanctimonious banker has a satchel full of stolen cash), others discover their hidden strengths (Crosby’s alcoholic doctor sobers up long enough to deliver a baby), while the frayed social network pulls more tightly together. The 1970s disaster films would add a theological dimension (remember the inverted Christmas tree in “The Poseidon Adventure”?) that remains quite foreign to Douglas’s pragmatic personality.

There is nothing metaphorical or metaphysical about the violence in “Stagecoach,” which retains the shocking, graphic immediacy that Douglas pioneered in films like “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” (1950) and “Them!” (1954). Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy In Ford’s film, the great set piece is the Indian attack on the stagecoach as it crosses an open stretch of desert. Douglas, no doubt wary of trying to surpass one of the most famous sequences in film history, almost throws away the scene. He covers Ford’s epic vistas with a single helicopter shot and quickly moves the chase into a wooded area, where it ends, not with the magnificent sense of release and deliverance of Ford’s film, but in a squalid shootout. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Instead, Douglas concentrates on Ringo’s last-reel showdown with Luke Plummer, a scene played so perfunctorily by Ford that it seems like an anticlimax (though a brilliant one, I think).

For Douglas, the darkened western town, with its deserted streets and little pools of light, becomes an urban jungle right out of one of his early films noirs, and Ringo’s confrontation with a vigorously characterized, actively sadistic Plummer (Keenan Wynn) is brutal and personal. When John Wayne’s Ringo rides off with his newfound love (Claire Trevor, as the “saloon girl” with a heart of gold), Ford seems to imagine them as a new Adam and Eve, whose children will populate an American Eden of freedom and democracy. Alex Cord’s Ringo enjoys a more prosaic fate, but perhaps a less burdensome one: when he rides away with his saloon girl (a young and impossibly lush Ann-Margret), we see a couple of kids escaping an adult world that has become too corrupt and confining for them. “Stagecoach” did not make Cord a star, but it didn’t destroy him: he moved into Euro-westerns and television (including a long run as a star of the CBS series “Airwolf” ) and today raises horses and writes novels. That seems to me a happy ending, too.

(Twilight Time, available exclusively through screenarchives.com , $19.95) ALSO OUT THIS WEEK A BETTER LIFE Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) directed this study of a Mexican gardener (Demián Bichir) working without papers in Los Angeles. When his truck is stolen, he and his teenage son go searching for it, in an apparent homage to Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves.” “As is sometimes the case with movies that take on civil and political rights without force-feeding the audience, ‘A Better Life’ plays the human interest angle hard,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times in June. (Summit, Blu-ray $30.49, DVD $26.99, PG-13) PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES Johnny Depp returns as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the fourth installment of the spoofy swashbuckling series from the producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Ian McShane joins the cast as the rival pirate Blackbeard, as does Penélope Cruz as a woman from Jack’s past.

Rob Marshall ( “Nine” ) directed; with Geoffrey Rush and Kevin McNally. “More energy will be expended parsing the box-office returns than discussing the merits of the film, which is likely to be judged entertaining enough and therefore, in the end, not much fun at all,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times in May. (Disney, Blu-ray 3-D/Blu-ray/DVD combo $49.99; Blu-ray/DVD combo $39.99, PG-13) IT TAKES A THIEF Robert Wagner is a cat burglar recruited by the United States government to steal for the side of truth and justice in an ABC series that ran from 1968 to 1970. This box set includes all 66 episodes on 18 discs. (Entertainment One, $199.98, not rated) BAD TEACHER Cameron Diaz sheds her nice-girl image for a raunchy comedy about a Chicago schoolteacher who hates her job and schemes to marry a wealthy colleague (Justin Timberlake). With Jason Segel; Jake Kasdan ( “Walk Hard” ) directed.

“In ‘Bad Teacher,’ a breezily crude comedy about unladylike pleasures like guzzling booze, swearing at children and being mean because, well, you can be, Cameron Diaz taps into her inner thug,” Ms. Dargis wrote in The Times in June. “It’s a beautiful thing.” (Sony, Blu-ray/DVD combo $40.99, DVD $30.99, R) PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES Andrew Rossi’s documentary examines the workings of the Times’s media desk, focusing on the reporters David Carr, Tim Arango and Brian Stelter. (Magnolia Home Entertainment, $26.98, R) A version of this article appears in print on October 16, 2011, on Page AR13 of the New York edition with the headline: The Man Who Dared to Fill John Wayne’s Boots. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Stagecoach (1939) Stagecoach (1939) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) Background Stagecoach (1939) is a classic Western from film auteur John Ford.

This film - his first sound Western - was a return to his most-acclaimed film genre after a thirteen year absence following Fox's Three Bad Men (1926) (and The Iron Horse (1924)). In the meantime, he had produced the superb, Oscar-winning drama about Irish republicanism, RKO's The Informer (1935). This film debuted John Ford's favorite setting - the majestic Monument Valley of the Southwest - the first of seven films he made in the famed western valley, followed by My Darling Clementine (1946) , Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Searchers (1956) , Sergeant Rutledge (1960), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Ford's reputation was elevated considerably by this film - it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing, and won two awards for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Score (for its compilation of 17 American folk tunes of the 1880s).

This Ford Western paved the way for all his other memorable Westerns, including My Darling Clementine (1946) , his "Cavalry" trilogy, The Searchers (1956) , and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). An inferior, Technicolor remake was attempted by Gordon Douglas in the 60s, Stagecoach (1966) with Bing Crosby, Ann-Margret, Robert Cummings, Stefanie Powers, and Red Buttons. This revolutionary, influential film - a story of redemption - is considered a landmark quintessential film that elevated westerns from cheaply-made, low-grade, Saturday matinee "B" films to a serious adult genre - one with greater sophistication, richer Western archetypes and themes, in-depth and complex characterizations, and greater profitability and popularity as well. (By 1939, the Western genre had fallen out of favor, but Stagecoach helped reinvent the genre, providing for its rebirth.

It must be remembered however, that 1939 also saw the release of other blockbuster Westerns including Union Pacific, Dodge City, The Oklahoma Kid, Ford's own Technicolor Drums Along the Mohawk, Destry Rides Again and Jesse James.) The film's sophisticated screenplay by Dudley Nichols (who won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Ford's The Informer (1935) and was a frequent collaborator with Ford), about the perilous adventures of a group aboard a stagecoach across Indian country between two frontier settlements during a sudden Apache uprising, was based on Ernest Haycox's Collier's Magazine short story "The Stage to Lordsburg," (appearing in April, 1937). But it also bears a slight resemblance and was inspired by Guy de Maupassant's Boule de Suif (literally 'Tub of Lard'), the story of a prostitute (Boule de Suif) traveling in a carriage through Prussian-occupied, war-torn France during the Franco-Prussian War with refugees who are prominent members of the French bourgeoisie. Director Ford also wove into the story colorful Western characters from Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

As in other films of the 1930s including Grand Hotel (1932) , Shanghai Express (1932) , and Lost Horizon (1937) , colorful, vividly-portrayed, widely-varied characters of clashing social classes/values are thrown together by fate and closely confined for a period of time as a group: a prostitute (or dance hall gal) forced to leave town a embezzling banker an alcoholic, disgraced frontier doctor (surgeon) a pregnant young bride, the wife of an Army officer en route to his post a stage driver a Marshal riding shotgun a rugged, escaped outlaw (Ringo Kid) - John Wayne in a breakthrough role, who is picked up on the road shortly after the coach's departure They act out in their relationships their representative social types. In Stagecoach, nine passengers during a stagecoach journey are placed together in a position of danger, one in which their true characters are tested and revealed. Major social issues and themes (sexual and social prejudice, alcoholism, childbirth, greed, shame, redemption and revenge) are closely mixed together into an exciting adventure story.

The structure of the film is very formal, divided neatly into eight episodes (four scenes of action alternating with four scenes of character interaction). The short prologue regarding the cavalry and the telegraph wires The 12-minute expository sequence in the town of Tonto, including the introduction of most of the characters and the establishment of their class distinctions The first leg of the trip on the stagecoach to Lordsburg The Dry Fork way station where the coach stops for food - includes the memorable dinner table scene The second leg of the trip toward Apache Wells in the snow The Apache Wells (Mexican) outpost, where Lucy's baby is born The final leg of the trip to Lordsburg, including the exciting Indian attack and the cavalry rescue The town of Lordsburg, where Ringo Kid faces the Plummers in a shoot-out The Story The credit titles are presented with a woodblock style typeface. Following the credits but before the main story, a short prologue presents the perilous atmosphere. Two couriers (one a Cheyenne Indian) gallop on horseback to a military/cavalry outpost, going past where a flag is being raised. Faintly in the background, "I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" is heard on the soundtrack.

They report to a captain and lieutenant (Tim Holt) that Apaches "have burnt every ranch building in sight" and "are being stirred up by Geronimo." The captain is assured that the passive-faced Indian scout (Chief Big Tree) isn't lying: "Naw, he's a Cheyenne. They hate Apaches worse than we do." A telegraph message is transmitted from nearby Lordsburg, but then the line goes dead - the wires have been cut. The only word in the message that is received is "Geronimo." There is evidence of Indian trouble near Lordsburg - Apache warriors are on the warpath against white pioneers near the Arizona border with Mexico. The main locale is the Southwest of the 1880s in the little town of Tonto, Arizona, where the characters are carefully introduced.

(Eventually, there will be six stagecoach passengers accompanied by three others - the driver, the shotgun assistant, and an escaped prisoner who joins the group on the trail.) The town is introduced to the lively tune of "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." [The tune becomes the theme music played when the stagecoach crosses the desert on its two day trip to Lordsburg in New Mexico.] The dusty Overland Stage Lines stagecoach pulls up on the other side of the street from the Tonto Hotel. Passengers are helped off the coach by the bulky, skittish stage driver Buck Rickabaugh (Andy Devine) during a rest stop. One of the passengers who will continue on toward Lordsburg is Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt), a pregnant lady on her way west (from the South) to meet her husband - a Cavalry lieutenant. The genteel Lucy gasps about one of the men, named Hatfield (John Carradine), that she notices outside the hotel - he's a white-hatted, shady, former Confederate officer turned cardsharp gambler: "Who is that gentleman?" The raffish, imperial-looking Hatfield appears as if he recognizes her.

Town friends, the Whitneys, describe Hatfield: "Hardly a gentleman Mrs. Mallory. I should think not. He's a notorious gambler." Buck inquires about his regular "shotgun guard" in the Sheriff's office, learning that he is "out with a posse...trying to catch the Ringo Kid" who probably "busted out" of the penitentiary and is "aimin' to get even with them Plummer boys" whose testimony sent him there. [To be introduced later in the film, Ringo Kid was jailed for defending his family - father and brother - against the Plummers. He escaped with intentions to avenge their deaths by killing the no-good Plummers.] Interested in pursuing both Ringo and Luke Plummer in Lordsburg, Tonto's Marshal, burly Curley Wilcox (George Bancroft) volunteers to "ride shotgun" with Buck and prevent an expected confrontation with the Ringo Kid.

In the town's Miners' & Cattlemens' Bank (with capital of $50,000 and assets of $250,000 proudly displayed on the front door window), pompous, self-important banker Henry Gatewood (Berton Churchill) accepts the $50,000 Wells Fargo payroll delivery from the coach lines, declaring: "What's good for the banks is good for the country." A closeup of Gatewood's snarling face is seen with the shadow of a cross behind him like a curse. Down the street, a saloon dance-hall girl (prostitute/whore dressed in bright tones) named Dallas (Claire Trevor) is resentful for being shunned and ostracized as a scarlet woman from town, hustled along by the virtuous, plump, moralistic, matronly women of the Ladies Law and Order League and a sheriff's deputy. [Their walk is accompanied by the marching version of director Ford's favorite hymn, 'Shall We Gather at the River?'] In front of the priggish ladies, a drunken, tipsy Dr. Josiah Boone M. D.

(Thomas Mitchell) is also evicted by his English-accented, stern-faced landlady (a member of the Ladies League) for not paying his rent. As he is put out on the street, the educated doctor quotes (mis-quotes) from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus: Is this the face that wrecked a thousand ships And burnt the towerless tops of Ilium? (He gestures with a farewell kiss) Farewell. Dallas complains to the bibulous and disreputable Doc about their shared predicament of being victims of a disease called "social prejudice." They are escorted/railroaded out of town by decent, self-righteous citizens: Dallas: Haven't I any right to live? What have I done? Boone: We're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the Law and Order League are scouring out the dregs of the town. Come on. Be a proud, glorified dreg like me. Boone offers his arm to his banished companion Dallas, invoking thoughts of the French Revolution: "Take my arm, Madame la Comtesse. The tumbril awaits.

To the guillotine!" They walk arm in arm to the local saloon where Dr. Boone enters and asks Jerry (Jack Pennick) the bartender for one last drink: Boone: Jerry, I'll admit as one man to another that economically, I haven't been of much value to you. Suppose you could put one on credit? Jerry: If talk was money Doc, you'd be the best customer I've got. When Doc explains that he is leaving town permanently, the bartender acquiesces and provides him with a free drink: "Just this one." The only other person in the bar is another passenger from the coach, Mr. Samuel Peacock (Donald Meek), a timid, solemn whiskey drummer (salesman). [Peacock is continually mistaken for a clergyman, and called by incorrect names throughout the film - Hancock and Haycock.] The three characters - the bartender, Doc, and Peacock - form a triangle, with Peacock at its apex in the background. The intoxicated doctor moves over to the salesman after learning his profession, falsely pretending friendship by putting his arm on his shoulder. He is keenly interested in the ample supply of whiskey samples from the man's small case.

In the bank, Gatewood speaks to his shrewish, domineering wife (Brenda Fowler) who demands five dollars to pay the butcher - she informs him of her invitation for lunch with the ladies of the Law and Order League. Presumably, this is the last straw - Mr. Gatewood places the Wells Fargo payroll in a leather bag and prepares to take flight with the embezzled funds. In this film - actually a morality play, each of the characters are representative, archetypal character types, divided initially between respectable and disrespectable social outcasts. However by film's end, the disreputable members of society prove to be the most noble, virtuous, and selfless. Respectable Stagecoach Movie Review & Film Summary (1939) | Roger Ebert Tweet "Stagecoach" is a film in which two great careers were renewed. Although he had appeared before in many films, as an extra, a stuntman and then an actor in B films, this was John Wayne 's first starring role in a film by John Ford . For Ford, it was a return after some years to a genre about which his ideas had grown--the genre in which he would make many of his greatest films.

With Ford's clout as a director and Wayne's clout as a star, they would make iconic films and establish themselves as one of the legendary partnerships in cinema. Advertisement They came together at a propitious moment in Ford's career. He was 45. He had directed his first silent films (ten of them!) in 1917. He had tasted great success, and won an Academy Award for directing "The Informer" in 1936. But now came his years of triumph. No director of the sound era made more great films more quickly than Ford did when he followed "Stagecoach" with "Young Mr. Lincoln" and "Drums Along the Mohawk," all three in 1939, and then made "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Long Voyage Home" in 1940 and "Tobacco Road" and "How Green Was My Valley" in 1941, collecting in that period three nominations and two Oscars for directing. Ford had his eye on John Wayne from the days when he was called Marion Morrison, nicknamed Duke, and was a football player from USC, working summers at 20th Century-Fox.

In the decade before "Stagecoach" Wayne worked in some 40 Westerns, from an extra to a lead, without distinguishing himself. Ford thought he had the makings of a star, and decided Wayne was right for the key role of the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach." The studio was adamantly opposed to the casting; it demanded a name actor. "Pappy" Ford imperiously insisted. And Wayne made an impression that would change his life and one day win him a place on a U. S. postage stamp. Seen today, "Stagecoach" may not seem very original. That's because it influenced countless later movies in which a mixed bag of characters are thrown together by chance and forced to survive an ordeal. The genre is sometimes called the Ark Movie. The film at times plays like an anthology of timeless clichés. You will see a woman going into labor as a doctor orders, "Boil water! Hot water!

And lots of it!" You will meet a prostitute with a heart of gold, and an evil banker, and a shifty gambler, and a pure-hearted heroine, and murderous Apaches, and a sultry Indian wife, and a meek little traveling man, and a chase scene with a stagecoach driver going hell for leather. You will see saloons, corrals, vast landscape, camp fires, and the U. S. Cavalry--which sounds the charge before riding to the rescue. Advertisement Despite the familiarity of these conventions, "Stagecoach" holds our attention effortlessly and is paced with the elegance of a symphony. Ford doesn't squander his action and violence in an attempt to whore for those with short attention spans, but tells astory, during which we learn to know the characters and become invested in them. He doesn't give all the key scenes to the same big star. Top billing went to Claire Trevor, as Dallas, the lady of pleasure.

("Dallas?" One is reminded of Marlene Dietrich : "I didn't become Shanghai Lil in one night.") Trevor was a star, but Ford gave nearly equal weight to the other passengers in the stagecoach, all played by actors who would have been familiar to movie audiences: Squeaky-voiced Andy Devine as the driver, John Carradine as the elegant gambler, Thomas Mitchell as the alcoholic Doc Boone, Louise Platt as the pregnant soldier's wife, and Donald Meek as the effeminate Mr. Peacock, a traveling salesman who improbably wears a checkered deerstalker hat in the Old West. As they line up facing each other, the Ringo Kid sits on the floor between them, but Ford somehow never frames him to seem lower. Confined for a good deal of the film inside the stagecoach, these gifted actors create a fascinating community as they gradually reveal their hidden reasons for traveling in great discomfort though hazardous Indian territory. The Ringo Kid, Wayne's character, is a wanted murderer being taken to prison by a U. S. Marshall (George Bancroft).

As the others pointedly shun the prostitute Dallas, he insists on her being given a drink of water and a place at the table, and his courtliness is manly and good-hearted. Of course he falls in love with her, and it inspires one of the great scenes: Advertisement Ringo Kid: "I still got a ranch across the border. There's a nice place--a real nice place... trees... grass... water. There's a cabin half built. A man could live there... and a woman. Will you go?" Dallas: "But you don't know me--you don't know who I am." Ringo Kid: "I know all I wanna know." Advertisement The way Wayne says that embodies his effortless authority. He says it and you don't doubt he means it. Indeed, the impression he makes here suggests he was perhaps lucky to avoid such a high-visibility role earlier in his career. He was 32 when he made this film, tall and slim, and had outgrown the almost improbable boyish beauty of his youth. He could growl and take a position and hold his ground and not talk too much, and he always sounded like he meant it.

Simon Callow writes in his biography of Orson Welles that Welles saw "Stagecoach" 40 times before he made " Citizen Kane ." The two films are hardly similar. What did Welles learn from it? Perhaps most of all a lean editing style. Ford made certain through casting and dialog that the purpose of each scene was made clear, and then he lingered exactly long enough to make the point. Nothing feels superfluous. When he deliberately slows the flow, as for a song performed by Yakima (Elvira Rios), the wife of an outpost boss, we understand it as the calm before a storm. ( Howard Hawks uses a quiet song by Dean Martin in the same way in " Rio Bravo .") Ford never makes the mistake of cutting so quickly that the sense and context of an action sequence is lost. The extended stagecoach chase always makes sense, and he allows his camera to be clear about the stunt work. Consider this extraordinary stunt: An Apache leaps from his own horse onto the stagecoach team, straddling the lead horses. He is shot. He falls between the horses to the ground, and the horses and stagecoach pass entirely over him. No CGI here; he risks his life.

Advertisement Wayne is the hero of the film, but not an "action hero." He was manifestly a bad man; the "Ringo Kid" doesn't get his picture on Wanted posters for nothing. But he never suggests evil, and seems prepared to be taken to prison even though he has many opportunities to escape. There is the suggestion he stays with the stagecoach because he is needed to protect its passengers, especially the two women. We see here Wayne's extraordinary physical grace and capacity for tenderness, and understand why Ford later cast him as "The Quiet Man." Two scenes in particular. Wayne in left foreground, leaning against a wall as he watches Dallas walk away from him down a corridor. Observe his body language. The way he looks after her and then straightens up and follows her. And later, look at Ford's lighting and composition as Dallas, in foreground in the moonlight next to a fence, stands alone and the Ringo Kid, in background, the smoke from his cigarillo back-lighted as a backdrop, approaches her. That was a studio shot. But much of the movie is shot on location in Ford's beloved Monument Valley, its prehistoric rock pillars framing the smallness of men.

Ford returned again and again to the valley, where his casts and crews lived in tents and were fed from a chuck wagon; he valued the distance from meddling studio executives. He was a dictator, and in that vastness his word was law. Advertisement The film's attitudes toward Native Americans are unenlightened. The Apaches are seen simply as murderous savages; there is no suggestion the white men have invaded their land. Ford shared that simple view with countless other makers of Westerns, and if it was crude in 1939 it was even more so as late as "The Searchers" (1956), the greatest Ford/Wayne collaboration. Only in his final film, "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964) did he come around to more humane ideas. Perhaps because of his long association with Wayne, Ford is often seen as a conservative. In fact he was an outspoken liberal, the standard bearer against Cecil B. DeMille's attempt to force a loyalty oath upon the Directors' Guild during the McCarthy witch-hunt. Ford was not a racist, nor was Wayne, but they made films that were sadly unenlightened.

Within "Stagecoach," however, beats a humanitarian heart: None of the occupants of the coach is taken for granted or dismissed casually. They are all given full weight in their mutual dependence. This is a very civilized Western. A restored print of "Stagecoach" has been released on Blu-ray in the Criterion Collection. Also in my Great Movies series: Ford's " The Grapes of Wrath " and " The Searchers ," and Wayne's "Red River" and "Rio Bravo." Advertisement Stagecoach (1939) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) The Story (continued) Along the way after rounding a turn, a rifle shot is heard, and a tracking shot zooms in (losing focus for a moment) for a large clear closeup of Ringo Kid (John Wayne in his first major western role, the role that made him famous, launching him as the most durable Western hero) from the perspective of the moving stagecoach. The camera rapidly tracks in on his face. Ringo is twirling and re-cocking his rifle in one hand, shouting out: "Hold it!", while holding his saddle in the other hand.

He is standing in the middle of the desert by the trail, stranded without a horse. Ringo is wearing a paneled, placket-front shirt with a neckerchief, and jeans with its pants legs rolled up outside of the boots. Sympathetic to Ringo, Buck excitedly calls out: "Hey look, it's Ringo!" Marshal Curley raises his rifle and points it at Ringo. The fugitive requests joining them as "another passenger" to Lordsburg because his horse became lame, and then is promptly put under arrest. He surrenders his rifle to Curley only when the Cavalry rides up from behind. Sitting on the floor and crammed in the middle of the crowded stagecoach, Ringo is between three passengers on each side of him. Gatewood: (sneering down) So you're the notorious Ringo Kid. Ringo Kid: My friends just call me Ringo, a nickname I had as a kid. Right name's Henry. Doc Boone: Seems to me I knew your family Henry. Didn't I fix your arm once when you were, uh, bucked off a horse? Ringo Kid: Are you Doc Boone? Doc Boone: I certainly am. Ah let's see.

I'd just been honorably discharged from the Union Army after the War of the Rebellion. Hatfield: You mean the War for the Southern Confederacy sir. Doc Boone: I mean nothing of the kind sir. Ringo Kid: That was my kid brother broke his arm. You did a good job Doc, even if you was drunk. Doc Boone: Thank you sir. Professional compliments are always pleasing. What happened to that boy whose arm I fixed? Ringo Kid: He was murdered. Ringo's last word silences and stuns the stage's passengers, as it rolls on through the large rock formations and buttes of the Valley. Bothered by the smoke from Doc Boone's cigar, Hatfield insists that it be extinguished for Lucy Mallory's sake, and Doc apologizes to Lucy: "Excuse me ma'am. Being so partial to the weed myself, I sometimes forget that it disagrees with others." Although Doc is courteous to Lucy, he is not civil toward Hatfield, believing he is not above shooting a man in the back: Hatfield: A gentleman doesn't smoke in the presence of a lady. Doc Boone: Three weeks ago, I took a bullet out of a man who was shot by a gentleman.

The bullet was in his back! Hatfield (feeling insulted): You mean to insinuate... Ringo Kid (to keep the peace): Sit down mister. Doc don't mean no harm. At the Dry Fork way station, the passengers alight, and Lucy learns that her husband's troops have left to join the soldiers at Apache Wells. Overbearing, Gatewood is insistent that even without troop support, the coach must continue toward Lordsburg: Gatewood: (To Buck) Well look here driver. You started this coach for Lordsburg and it's your duty to get us there. (To Lieutenant Blanchard) And it's your duty young man to come along with us. Lt. Blanchard: It's my duty Mr. Gatewood to obey orders. I'm sorry sir... Gatewood: I call this a desertion of duty. I'll report you to your superior officer. And if necessary, I'll take the matter up with Washington. Lt. Blanchard: That's your privilege sir. But if you give us any trouble here, I'll have to put you under restraint. Gatewood: Now don't lose your temper. Don't lose your temper.

Marshal Curley suggests taking a vote among the passengers inside the way station to decide whether they will proceed or return with the soldiers who have brought them. Ringo must remind Curley to treat Dallas with the same respect and care as that received by Mrs. Mallory. Curley determines that there are seven "Aye" votes and only one "No" vote: Lucy: "I've traveled all the way here from Virginia. I'm determined to get to my husband. I won't be separated any longer." Dallas: "What difference does it make? It doesn't matter." Gatewood: "I vote that we go on. I demand. I'm standing on my legal rights." Hatfield cuts a deck of cards, looks at an Ace of Spades, and votes: "Lordsburg." [The superstitious card that dooms its player appears one more time at the conclusion of the film] Doc Boone: "I'm not only a philosopher sir, I'm a fatalist. Somewhere, sometime, there may be the right bullet or the wrong bottle waiting for Josiah Boone. Why worry when or where?...Having that philosophy sir, I've always courted danger... Mr.

Peacock: "I'd like to go on, brother. I want to reach the bosom of my dear family in Kansas City, Kansas as quickly as possible. But I may never reach that bosom if we go on, so under the circumstances you understand brother, I think it best we go back to the bosoms, I mean the soldiers. Curley votes "Aye" for Buck and then votes proxy for the Kid: "You go with me." Kid affirms his desire to get to Lordsburg: "Ain't nothin' keepin' me out of Lordsburg, Curley." One of the film's most expressionistic scenes involves the seating of the passengers at the way station's long table for a mid-day dinner meal. As dinner is served, Ringo nonchalantly, inadvertently and persuasively helps Dallas (ignorant that she is a prostitute) into a chair before sitting down, treating her with respect. She is positioned with Lucy (the lady) on her right at the head of the table and Ringo on her left. Ringo's audacious action by placing Dallas too close to Lucy offends the Southern woman's sense of propriety.

It also prompts Hatfield's over-exaggerated chivalrous protection and courtliness to emerge. Noticing her discomfort and frozen posture, Hatfield rudely offers pious Lucy another seat further away: "May I find you another place Mrs. Mallory? It's cooler by the window." Arrogantly, Lucy and Hatfield move and relocate to the far end of the table (joined by Gatewood), leaving outlaw Ringo and whore Dallas mutually isolated and sitting together at the other end. With a good-natured spirit, Ringo expresses indifference toward the way they were snubbed: Ringo: Looks like I've got the plague, don't it? Dallas: No, no it's not you. Ringo: Well, I guess you can't break out of prison and into society in the same week. (He starts to rise from his place but Dallas holds him down.) Dallas: Please, please.

To the soft tune of "I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" on the soundtrack (Lucy Mallory's theme music), Lucy and Hatfield talk intimately and nostalgically about the Old South, exchanging thoughts about their shared Southern heritage and how he served with her father during the Civil War: Lucy: You've been very kind. Why? Hatfield: The world I live in, one doesn't often meet a lady Mrs. Mallory. Lucy: Have you ever been in Virginia? Hatfield: I was in your father's regiment. Lucy: I should remember your name. You're Mr. Hatfield. Hatfield: That's what I'm called, yes. In a different conversation at the other end of the table, Dallas talks with Ringo: Dallas: Why do you look at me like that? Ringo: I'm just tryin' to remember. Ain't I seen you someplace before ma'am? Dallas: No, no you haven't. Ringo: I wish I had though. Dallas: I know you, I mean, I know who you are. I guess everybody in the territory does. Ringo: Yep. Well, I used to be a good cowhand but things happen.

Dallas: Yeah, that's it. Things happen. Now they'll take you back to prison. Ringo: Not 'til I finish a job in Lordsburg. Dallas: But you can't. You're going there as a prisoner. The passengers are notified that the stagecoach is ready to continue its journey toward Apache Wells. In the open desert at a crossroads, the Cavalry escort veers off to the left, leaving the stagecoach unprotected. In the driver's seat as the coach lurches ahead, Curley and Buck argue over Ringo's revenge and "job in Lordsburg": Buck: If I was you, I'd let him shoot it out. Curley: At who? Buck: Luke Plummer and the Kid. There'd be a lot more peace in this territory if that Luke Plummer was so full of lead he couldn't hold his liquor. Curley: I ain't sayin' I don't share your sentiments Buck, but you're a born fool. Buck: Well I know that. Curley: In the first place, Luke would kill the Kid in a gunfight. In the second place, if Luke did get shot, he's got two brothers just as ornery as he is.

Naw, the only safe place for Ringo is in the pen, and I aim to get him there all in one piece. Buck: Well, I'll be doggoned if I didn't do you an injury Curley. I figured you were after the re-ward. Curley: Re-ward? Why the Kid's ol' man and me was friends. We used to punch cattle together. Besides, I could use that five hundred in gold. As the temperature gets colder, Doc Boone solicitously wraps a scarf around Peacock's neck and carefully wipes his eyes. Gatewood pompously berates the "impetulance of that young lieutenant" and their lack of protection from the Army. Clutching his large briefcase (carrying his embezzled bank funds amounting to $50,000) in front of him, the blustering, embezzling banker extends his criticism toward government regulation of banks [an obvious criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal at the time of the film's release]: I don't know what the government is coming to. Instead of protecting businessmen, it pokes its nose into business. Hmm. Why, they're even talking now about having bank examiners.

As if we bankers don't know how to run our own banks. Why Boone, I actually have a letter from a popinjay official saying they were going to inspect my books. I have a slogan that should be emblazoned on every newspaper in the country. 'America for Americans.' The government must not interfere with business! Reduce taxes! Our national debt is something shocking! Over one billion dollars a year! What this country needs is a businessman for President. Doc Boone responds vacuously: "What this country needs is more fuddle." Then, the doctor samples more of Peacock's whiskey from his liquor case as the whiskey-drummer protests feebly. During the coach's journey, snow appears on the ground, the temperature drops, and Curley asks Buck why he is taking the mountain road. The cowardly Buck responds: "I'm usin' my head. Those breech-clad Apaches don't like snow." Inside the coach, Dallas offers her soft shoulder for Lucy to lean on if she would change seats, but Lucy rebuffs her, declining the compassionate offer: Dallas: Maybe you'd like to sit next to me. You could put your head on my shoulder. Lucy: No thank you.

To illustrate mounting tensions, Hatfield chivalrously pours water from a canteen into a silver cup for Lucy, but when water is offered to Dallas, he takes his cup back and she is given the canteen by Ringo, who apologizes regretfully: "Sorry, no silver cups." After passing through a dust storm, the coach arrives at its next stop, Apache Wells, arriving there after seven hours on the road. The longest and most central episode in the film is the 24-minute sequence at this staging post. The sequence includes the first of two major events or catalysts that reveal the true characters of the travelers and level some of their class distinctions - the childbirth (the second is the Indian attack). In both of the major events or crises of the film, the disrespectable characters prove their gallantry, selflessness and heroism, while the respectable characters are full of hollow rhetoric and fraudulence. Four vaqueros greet the stagecoach. Chris (Chris-Pin Martin), the Mexican proprietor of the way station, tells them that the cavalry troops which were there previously have already left: Chris: The soldiers have gone. Lucy: Where's Captain Mallory? Where's my husband? Where is he?

Chris: You his wife I think? Lucy: Where is he? Did he go with his men? Chris: Si, senora...what you call a skirmish with Apaches last night. Soldiers take Captain Morales (sic) to Lordsburg. I think he get hurt, maybe. Lucy: Badly? Chris: Si, senora. I think so. Shortly after learning the tragic news of her husband's injuries in a "skirmish with Apaches," Lucy faints and collapses on the floor, going into labor. Curley carries her to a back room of the staging post, while Dallas and Ringo summon Doc Boone to help. Gatewood is selfishly heard complaining again, this time about the inconvenient delay in getting to Lordsburg: Gatewood: A sick woman on our hands! That's all we needed. Now we're in a fine fix my friends. It's a fine country we're living in. The army has no right to leave a public place like this unprotected. Ringo: Looks to me like the Army's got its hands pretty full, Mister.

Doc Boone stumbles around intoxicated, knowing that he will soon be called upon to come out of his drunken stupor, take professional responsibility and deliver the baby. Meanwhile, Hatfield's anger at the doctor and concern for Lucy flare up together: Hatfield: A fine member of the medical profession. Drunken beast! Doc Boone (removing his coat): Coffee. Give me coffee. Black coffee...Blacker, stronger. Keep 'er comin' Curley...(Curley and Ringo try to sober him up.) Hatfield: Isn't that drunken swine sober yet? Curley: He's doing the best he can. Hatfield: Will you hurry! Peacock rises and gasps in terror when Chris' Apache wife Yakima (Elvira Rios) enters the room. Gatewood expresses similar racist prejudice: Peacock: Savages! John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) Starring John Wayne and Claire Trevor — Immortal Ephemera By Cliff Aliperti 10 Comments Stagecoach was the first John Wayne movie I saw when I was a kid and it remains my favorite of any of his films. Revisiting it this week left me amazed by how much Stagecoach manages to grow with you.

Filled with a fine supporting cast, each of whose other work has become more familiar to me in the intervening years, it's all the more impressive that no matter what age I watch Stagecoach John Wayne's Ringo Kid still towers above them all. It's still my favorite screen entrance. We've heard a bit about him, but we don't meet the Ringo Kid until over 18 minutes into the movie. It looks the same every time, no surprises anymore, but it still gets a rise out of me. The camera catches Ringo from afar, makes a shaky approach that confuses to a blur before sharpening close upon his facial features. No matter how many times you've seen it that brief blur delivers a beat of anticipation knowing that once he comes into focus he's going to remain the focus. Credit John Ford for the style; credit John Wayne for sheer presence. It is one of those screen moments I wish I could go back and enjoy for the first time all over again. Ringo stands defiant yet quickly reveals himself to be down to earth, polite, even conscientious. All around charming. Character is the character's strength, all the more so when you remember that Ringo is an escaped convict on a mission of vengeance.

Ringo's brother and father were killed by badman Luke Plummer and his brothers. Now Ringo wants Plummer. George Bancroft's Curley immediately puts Ringo under arrest, but from the second Ringo joins the others you know they're going to need him. You also know that there's nothing that could possibly restrain him from evening the score with the Plummer boys. Nothing but Claire Trevor's Dallas, a prostitute riding the stage to Lordsburg after being driven from town by the women of high society. How Trevor couldn't get an Oscar nomination in 1940 can only be explained with a shrug of the shoulders and quiet mention of 1939, commonly held up as the movies' greatest year. Stiff competition. What I forgot about Stagecoach until watching again this week, perhaps being too involved with Ringo to have ever even noticed before, is Trevor's stunning performance. The woman is broken and her fractured state causes her to really take society's scolding to heart. Her past keeps her from looking others in the eye when she speaks. She's used to scorn. So when Ringo treats her like a lady, just as much a lady as the respectable Mrs.

Mallory (Louise Platt), Trevor's Dallas is so overwhelmed that her replies come in a quiver. Her shaky voice almost breaks you. You long to comfort her. Thankfully Ringo is there. Her eyes light up at his innocent defense of her. Ringo calls her "ma'am" and "Miss Dallas" while the others, excepting Doc (Thomas Mitchell), do their best not to speak to her at all. What I hadn't remembered about Stagecoach was that besides the incredible collection of characters, the breathtaking shots of Monument Valley, and beyond the rousing shoot 'em up action is, thanks to Trevor, a touching love story that stands out above all those other masterful ingredients. Stagecoach was based on the Ernest Haycox short story "Stage to Lordsburg," which was brief enough to appear in its entirety inside just one edition of Collier's Magazine. That April 10, 1937 edition of Collier's is a heck of a find for classic movie fans as not only does it include the basis of Stagecoach but Hagar Wilde's short story "Bringing Up Baby" as well!

Stage to Lordsburg by Ernest Haycox as it appeared inside the April 10, 1937 edition of Collier's Magazine. John Ford spent $2,500 for the rights to Haycox's story and then unsuccessfully shopped it around until Walter Wanger wisely bit. Wanger wanted Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich to play Ringo and Dallas, but Ford wisely preferred to spread his budget over more talent to fill out the cast. Thankfully so as it is now hard to imagine anyone but these recognizable faces in each of Stagecoach's roles.

For as great as John Wayne and Claire Trevor are we also have Thomas Mitchell , who did win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in his part of the drunken Doc; The menacing John Carradine, dressed in black with a past to match as Hatfield; Andy Devine doing his usual delightful croaking as stagecoach driver, Buck; experienced and somewhat haggard looking George Bancroft as the Marshall, Curley, riding shotgun alongside Buck; Louise Platt looking as fragile as porcelain as the beautiful Lucy Mallory in search of her cavalry husband; the so properly named Donald Meek as Peacock, the quiet whiskey salesman who everyone confuses for a clergyman; and Berton Churchill as the shifty banker Gatewood who's playing just the part that pre-code fans would expect of him. Leaving the love story behind Stagecoach is still a gripping action film with layers of suspense that are continuously fulfilled. From the start, well before we even meet Ringo, there's the threat of Geronimo and the Apache. It saddles the Cavalry, led by young Tim Holt, alongside Buck's stage for the first part of the journey and is the prime threat to all throughout Stagecoach.

Once Ringo joins the others the looming threat of his own one-on-one showdown begins to take over as prime concern of the audience. Why? Because we care so much about Ringo and it has been established that Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler) is a better shot than he is. And even if he isn't he has two brothers to more than shift the odds in his favor. As we become more involved with the Ringo Kid and Dallas we become more concerned about the threat of the Plummers. Of course, just as the Plummers loom as the sole threat in our minds the Apache send out war signals and we're sucked back into the lives of all our other interesting friends. John Ford's Stagecoach premiered in Los Angeles, February 15, 1939 before going into general release that March. It was an immediate critical and popular success and continues to be so. While a legendary collection of leading ladies may have kept Claire Trevor from an Oscar nomination in 1940, Stagecoach fared pretty well as a whole receiving seven Academy Award nominations in total, including Best Picture and Best Director, and winning two, Mitchell's for Supporting Actor and another split four ways for its score.

I don't usually cover the really big movies like Stagecoach. It seems like everyone has seen it and everything has been written about it. But I do know there are people with a bias against Westerns. I know it personally through various friends and family. Stagecoach is delivered as a Western, sure, but forget about genre here. Anyone who loves rich characters and a poignant love story, and can withstand a bit of action along the way, will find something to love about Stagecoach. Share this: Film - Stagecoach - Into Film Home | Films | Explore Films | Stagecoach (1939) In this classic western from director John Ford, a group of different people are all aboard the same stagecoach. Among others, there's a drunken doctor, a gambler, a bank manager and the notorious Ringo Kid (played by western legend John Wayne). Their trip is a perilous one, because Native Americans wish to attack those settlers crossing their territory. All the passengers have their secrets, and as they face impending danger, they learn not to judge people by appearances. Clubs provide opportunities to watch, review and make films.

Start a film club today Director/s Super Reviewer ½ A stagecoach containing a disparate assortment of characters comes under Indian attack. John Ford revolutionized the genre with this beautifully crafted western and John Wayne was catapulted to stardom for his performance as the vengeance seeking gunfighter caught up in defending a group of strangers. But for me, the film is all about Thomas Mitchell as his preferred typecast of intellectual drunkard although it's one of many wonderful performances as the faultless cast represent a hugely likeable bunch and offer Ford an opportunity to highlight social prejudices. The message is to never judge a book by its cover as outlaws can be honourable, "fallen women" can be thoughtful and considerate, drunks can be courageous and respected gentlemen can be crooks. Also featuring some ground breaking stuntwork, this story has been remade many times and its influence can be seen in everything from the work of Akira Kurosawa to The Breakfast Club and it still stands up as one of the very best of the genre. xGary Xx Super Reviewer ½ I realize that my review is going to be considered controversial, but listen, this is all just my opinion. I do love westerns.

They are an American institution, and, by and large, have proven to be perhaps the only genre films that are truly uniquely American. Having said that, this film is overrated. Yes, it wasn't the first western, but it pretty much defined the genre and set the standard for basically every film to follow for the new few decades until revisionism hit starting in the late 60s. This put both John Ford and John Wayne on the map, making icons and legends out of them, but c'mon, if you strip away all of the historical, culutral, and aesthetic significances, and ignore the film's influence and legacy, it's really not all that special or interesting. Don't get me wrong, it's good, but it really hasn't held up that well. Perhaps I'd feel a lot differently had this been the first western I ever saw, but since it is so old, and things have changed so much since then, I can't help but kinda take this for granted by default. The plot follows nine travelers thrust together on the titular vehicle as they make their way across the west through the dangerous Apache Territory, and how they must all band together if they want to survive.

Okay, so fine, the plot's not much, but the performances do slightly make up for it, and yeah, it looks decent, and the music is really good, and the stunts and action are okay, but I can't let myself get swept up in everything and give this one a high rating by default. I'll admit that I've done that sort of thing in the past, and maybe I need to be more honest and make some reconsiderations, but for now, with this one, I'm standing my ground and saying that yes, while this is a landmark film, it's not a masterpiece when taken solely on its own terms. Chris Weber Super Reviewer A motley group of people travel through dangerous "Indian country" (isn't it all supposed to be Indian country?). As I watched this film, I found myself wondering the characters were cliches in 1939 because then I might have found something fresh and original about John Ford's film. But in 2011, I found everything predictable with the exception of the doctor's eventual heroism.

Overall, I don't feel qualified to give an educated opinion on this film; I'm trying to like Westerns, but this film feels like a racist (Natives are, of course, depicted as wild, savage, malevolent forces) cliche. I can't be the only one who thinks that, but judging from the critics' and Super Reviewers' raves, I must be. Jim Hunter Stagecoach (1939) - The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection Spine #516 This is where it all started. John Ford’s smash hit and enduring masterpiece Stagecoach revolutionized the western, elevating it from B movie to the A-list and establishing the genre as we know it today. The quintessential tale of a group of strangers thrown together into extraordinary circumstances, Stagecoach features outstanding performances from Hollywood stalwarts Claire Trevor, John Carradine, and Thomas Mitchell, and, of course, John Wayne, in his first starring role for Ford, as the daredevil outlaw the Ringo Kid. Superbly shot and tightly edited, Stagecoach (Ford’s first trip to Monument Valley) is Hollywood storytelling at its finest.

Cast New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition Audio commentary by western authority Jim Kitses (Horizons West) Bucking Broadway, a 1917 silent feature by John Ford, with new music composed and performed by Donald Sosin Journalist and television presenter Philip Jenkinson’s extensive 1968 video interview with Ford New video appreciation of Stagecoach, with director and Ford biographer Peter Bogdanovich New video interview with Ford’s grandson, Dan Ford about the director and his home movies New video piece, featuring journalist Buzz Bissinger, about trader Harry Goulding’s key role in bringing Monument Valley to Hollywood New video homage to legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, with celebrated stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong Video essay by writer Tag Gallagher analyzing Ford’s visual style in Stagecoach Screen Director’s Playhouse 1949 radio dramatization of Stagecoach, with John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and Ford, downloadable as an MP3 file Theatrical trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by David Cairns and Ernest Haycox’s “Stage to Lordsburg,” the short story that inspired the film New cover by Eric Skillman Current Posts

Question: Who played the Ringo Kid in the film Stagecoach?
Answer: John Wayne